


ishikore-dome

by sajere1



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, LGBTQ Character, Mentions of Underage, Queer Themes, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5452094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>miyako is a girl's name. feminine. girly. lady-like.</p>
<p>so miyako - miyako, who is supposed to be A Girl, supposed to be A Lady, supposed to look up when mom says "come in girls!" - makes a new name. and yolei, as it happens, isn't a girl's name.</p>
<p>[or: a series of moments documenting yolei's transition from "baby girl" to full-grown man]</p>
            </blockquote>





	ishikore-dome

Here’s how it happens.

The Inoue family picks out the name Miyako. It means beautiful night child, and it is a girl’s name. Because it’s going to be a girl, the doctors say. It’s a girl. A beautiful, beautiful baby girl.

And five years later, Miyako, who was given a girl’s name and called a beautiful baby girl and stands in the mirror and likes the flat chest – Miyako makes up a new name, scratched out of monkey bars and wood chips and no-mom-I-don’t-want-to-grow-my-hair-longs.

Miyako creates the name Yolei.

And, Yolei decides, it’s going to be a unisex name.

+x+

Iori Hida is a tiny child who lives down the hallway and coos when Yolei walks past, and Yolei says _hi, my name is Yolei,_ and Iori says _Yolei, Yolei, Yolei!_ and claps, laughs at the taste of a new word on his baby tongue, tiny and sweet and living in a world black and white.

_Don’t lie, Miyako,_ Moemoe, the ever-overbearing older sister, scolds. _Yolei isn’t your real name._

_Yolei?_ Iori says.

Time passes. Iori grows. Soon his gaze goes from a baby’s smile to the hard set of a disciplined child, and he carries on full conversations with Yolei, decides for some godawful reason to get a bowl cut (Yolei told him not to, _honestly_ ), and when his grandfather yells come in, boys! he doesn’t question when Yolei’s head whips around instinctively, too.

And never, not once, does he say the word Miyako.

Yolei loves him for that.

+x+

“You know,” Taichi says once, “it’s weird how you’re the only person I’ve met whose gender isn’t the same as their digimon’s.”

“Huh,” Yolei says, shirt edge twisting between thin fingers, “fancy that.”

+x+

“Miyako, huh?” TK says when he finds out, grinning a shit-eating grin that takes up his whole face.

“TK,” Iori berates gently, and TK backs down – always does when Iori’s involved, everyone says they’re the least connected of all the Jogress partners but the two of them can coordinate thoughts just through the sounds of their breathing, honestly – but Daisuke is just getting started, eyes lit up at the thought of new blackmail material.

Kari cuts him off with a single look. “Well, I think it fits you,” she says, with the same general tendency of trying to make things better and somehow making them all a million times worse as always.

“Thanks guys,” Yolei says sardonically, “real great to have your support.”

Weeks later – months, maybe; the passage of time is almost impossible to track nowadays – Daisuke says, eager to impress with long-stowed blackmail, “Hey, Ken, wanna know Yolei’s real name?”

“No,” Ken says, and Yolei could kiss him.

+x+

Yolei takes to tucking purple hair beneath a beige cap, almost as if there’s no hair at all. It’s grown out – _oh, it’s so cute that way,_ Mom had said, and Yolei had relented on this one thing – and all the boys at school say _what a pretty girl,_ say _it’s a shame she tries so hard to be one of the dudes,_ say _if she stopped being so loud she would be cute._

“You’re the most handsome person I’ve ever seen,” Ken says in quiet awe when Yolei chops all the hair off, and it’s worth Mom’s anger for that alone.

+x+

They make the girls wear skirts in junior high.

There are so many bigger problems – Yolei knows, okay, integration of digimon and humans, it’s a tough job and coordinating with politicians and land-buyers and oil companies is shit on the best of days – but somehow, somehow, there’s no getting past staring in the mirror at long legs under a skirt, at jackets that flatter the shoulder and chest.

Wow, Yolei, you actually look decent in that, Daisuke snickers just before Ken smacks him with the textbook they’re supposed to be studying from.

So life becomes a routine of wake up, get dressed. Put on the skirt.

And Yolei spends every morning trying to push down the chest that kills just a little more every time it grows.

+x+

“Really?” Ken snorts, when they’re both 17 and a little high and a little drunk and a little too undressed. “You want me to call you a good boy? You sure you said that right?”

“Shut up,” Yolei grumbles, taking another swig of the shitty vodka Daisuke regularly offers Ken for occasions just like this one. Yolei’s face is hot, and god it must look stupid, that bright pink blush against the deep cropped purple cut. “If you don’t want to, it’s fine, but you don’t have to make fun – “

“Hey,” Ken says, voice dropped to something more serious as he grabs Yolei’s wrist – gentle, always gentle, to make up for a rage he couldn’t cause or control. “I’m sorry, it was mean to laugh.” His lips curve up. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.”

“You pullin’ my leg, Ichijouji?” Yolei snorts – to give him an out, just in case he really isn’t into it, in cause it’s a lost cause.

“Maybe I will, if you're a good boy,” Ken grins, and Yolei laughs even as he leans in for a kiss.

+x+

The family won’t stop insisting on a dress. _It’s traditional,_ Mom says. _Don’t you want to look pretty?_ Chizuru says. _Honestly, Miyako,_ Dad says, _is it that hard to wear one dress in your life?_

_Fuck it,_ Daisuke shrugs when Yolei asks him, so Yolei says _fuck it_ and wears a goddamn suit to the wedding.

Ken, as it turns out, cries over the vows anyway.

+x+

“Daddy?” tiny, 2-year-old Naomi says, with Yolei’s voice and Ken’s eyes, and she doesn’t look at all perplexed when both of her parents turn to look at her.

+x+

They have 3 kids, total. Naomi – and when Kari comes to visit from where she and Willis have stationed themselves firmly in Colorado, she always takes care to bring presents, because she’s gonna be the best godmother there is, dammit – Sammy – Osamu, actually, but Yolei is nothing if not accepting to people who want to go by different names, and most of his godfathers’ presents consists of karate weapons that gather dust in his closet – and Katsuro – and Daisuke hasn’t bought anything for the toddler yet, but he regularly drops by just to coo softly and look at Yolei with watery eyes and say, _shit, my kid was never this cute._

Time passes. Things change.

And 6 years later, Yolei catches Sammy giving Rex Tachikawa a blowjob in the cleaning supplies closet.

+x+

“Um,” Sammy says.

Yolei puts up a hand. “Don’t.”

“Uuuuuum,” Sammy repeats, looking increasingly distressed with his quickly spiraling situation.

Yolei sighs. Really? _Really?_ On _cleaning day?_ “You,” Yolei says, “are never having any sexual contact in my cleaning closet ever again. Did you consider how many chemicals are in there? What if you’d got one in your mouth?”

Sammy blinks; his mouth drops, just a little bit, and Yolei is pleased to have surprised him. “We – we were careful,” he stutters, staring Yolei down with a bite to his lip.

“There is _no such thing_ as too careful,” Yolei threatens. “ _Never again._ Second – while I was in the house? Really, Sammy?”

Sammy’s face goes red and his gaze is rooted firmly to the floor – but he’s a terrible liar and Yolei’s got the Angry Face on. “He, uh,” Sammy mumbles, face draining pale against the light purple hair, he got from Yolei, “he – Rex – he was kinda into that. Actually. It’s uh. A thing.”

Oh god, way too much info about Yolei’s kids’ sex lives. “Well, cut that particular kink off,” Yolei insists, and at the word kink Sammy chokes, thumping his own chest to hack off his shock. “And finally – “ and here Yolei sighs, goes a little pink, grimaces, sighs again, and steels for the conversation.

“I wasn’t aware,” Yolei says, “you were interested in men. Is there anything I can do to understand what you’re going through with this?”

+x+

_LGBT._

It’s not a hard search. Google really is one of the greatest tools of the 21st century, and Yolei’s never been short on a desire to learn. The word Sammy used was demisexual – and okay, Yolei doesn’t live under a rock or anything, gay people aren't exactly a new concept – but there’s so much more than just gay people. There’s bi and pan and ace and genderfluid and nonbinary and aro and – and there’s – _there’s –_

“Transgender,” Yolei breathes to Ken, and it’s like the sky has breathed new life into his bones.

+x+

Going on testosterone reminds Yolei a lot of going to the Digital World for the first time – because there was a before and now there’s an after, and Before everything seemed okay, loneliness and dysphoria and misery-misunderstanding-loneliness were just par for the course, but now a whole new dimension of hope and experience has opened up and he wants it _all._

He’d been worried it wouldn’t work – _I’m 41,_ he laughed self-deprecatingly, and Ken squeezed his hand where they’d gathered with the rest of the DigiDestined to break the ‘maybe call Yolei _he_ now news,’ _it’s a little late to go through another puberty_ – but Koushiro and Ken and Iori had banded together for a weekend of Serious Research and pop, out it came, age had nothing to do with it, Yolei could absolutely transition.

So early bedtime research and she and mom becomes needles in a bathroom and he and pa, and on top of the rest of the Christmas presents that year the digidestined leave a binder and a neat stack of money with no label except _For the surgery one day._

+x+

The binder feels just like middle school, like pushing down his chest to feel a modicum of okay-ness again, of chopping off his hair yet again, but this time to a buzzcut. It’s constricting and it rubs his ribs just a little wrong.

And for once, he thinks, as he poses in front of the mirror, binder stark white against his black slacks as he rolls his arms up to get a better look, he looks perfect.

+x+

“Excuse me, sir,” a worker says on the street a year later, bumping right past Yolei as he counts money outside the hospital, and he almost cries.

+x+

Here’s how it happens.

Yolei is 12 years old. He doesn’t have to wear skirts yet – doesn’t say he, either, just feels the wrongness of the _she_ reverberating through his body, down his spine, out through his skin. He’s 12 years old.

“Could you repeat your name for me, please?” Hawkmon says, ever polite, and he reminds Yolei of Iori, just a bit.

“It’s Yolei,” Yolei says, staring up at the sky and grinning beneath his orange helmet. “And you can’t tell anyone, but it’s a boy’s name.”


End file.
